Launch Of The STR Disruptor Series

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome everybody to a very special edition of the Boostly podcast with a brand new little mini series that I'm going to be starting up called the Disruptors. And today is the first episode. And I'm very excited for this because I get to speak to two people that I've been following and chatting to for the majority of 2022, and very much looking forward to hopefully meeting in person next year before we reveal who they are. What I wanted to do is to throw the question over to you everybody that is tuning in. Let's give you a little chance to plug your business. So if you can do so in the comment section right now, whether you're watching live or whether you're watching on the replay, leave a hashtag live, leave a hashtag replay. And let me know where in the world your hospitality business is. Give yourself a pitch and a promote. Put the web links in there, Let us know who your ideal guests are. Let you know who you want to welcome into your properties over the next couple of months. Leave that in the comments and let's get started on with the show. This is a freestyle going off the dumb.

Ready for my close up. Good looking, let me tell you. Get more bookings.

Oh, that'd be nice.

Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Well, having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you'll better butt direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Okay, we are here.

I love that we are live. Amazing.

Thank you, thank you. I did have somebody message me once and saying, I do love the podcast, but can you just lose the rap? And I'm like, I can't lose. We've had it for.

I love it. I think it's great. I think you. I remember you sent it to us sometime last year and I was in an airport. I just died laughing. I was like, that is just fabulous.

Well, we, we are live. We've got people tuning in. So hello to everybody that is with us. Okay, so we've got Alex and Annie with us today. We're gonna. The reason why I wanted you to want is because this little mini series is called the Disruptors. And I see everything that what you're doing this year with, with the audio with the podcast. And, and it's, it really, to me is what this industry is, is crying out for. So thank you very much for coming on and being the first guest in the STR Disruptor series. We're going to go through a few things, we're going to dig into a couple of questions. We've asked LinkedIn to give us some, some questions, which is, which is cool. So we're going to dig into them. But before we get started, Annie will go to yourself first, then we'll go to Alex. Can you just please give us a little bit of the background of before you came together with the podcast, Like a little bit of background with the industry, what you were doing beforehand. And let us know where you are tuning in from around the world, please.

So for me, I started out in the hotel business 25 plus years ago and then I moved into vacation rentals in the late 90s, worked through the early 2000s, was at Expedia for four and a half years and then moved over to channel management. So kind of came full circle, worked in every aspect of the industry. And along the way I met Alex. Alex actually at a show about five years ago. And then for some reason we stuck together, stayed friends and decided to take this crazy adventure of doing a podcast and joining people like you. Mark.

There you go.

Amazing.

Thank you very much. So from hotels to Expedia to channel managers, Alex, what was your route into this industry?

Yeah, so actually I've been in vacation rentals for about 14 years now. I started in marketing and advertising at a firm in Myrtle beach and Condo World, where I am CMO at currently, was my first client that I got in the agency world. And this was during 2008, 2009, when it was very hard to get any sort of advertising type clients and ended up forming a great relationship with the owner of Condo World and started doing a lot of cool things with them and then came on full time. So I've been with the company and we've done a lot of cool things from building our own property management system to becoming our own regional, what we refer to as a hybrid OTA where we book reservations for our 500 properties along with several other thousand properties on the Grand Strand. And also very involved on the DMO space, a Chamber cbb, that's a big entity within our area that promotes tourism and really just makes a huge impact on the local economy here. So experienced on that side and get to see a lot of the legislative issues that come from Airbnb, which I know we'll get into. And now most recently just doing the podcast with England, which has become really a wonderful pastime of ours and a full time process of ours that we do quite regular. But we've had a great time with it and thank you so much for having us here today.

No, absolutely. So five years ago, what was the event that you two met at?

This was actually a conference that no longer exists anymore. It was called the On Site Property Management association, referred to as otma. And this was a small group of operators that were vacation rentals, but they maintained the front desk of the property. So they do the F and B, the HOA in a lot of cases. And that was actually the first conference I ever went to by myself. I'd only been to I think one VRMA before that. So traveling out of state by myself, renting a car by myself, doing all the things and really didn't know anybody at that event. But somehow Annie and I got sitting next to each other at breakfast and I think we were both a little bit nervous being there. We just immediately connected and just got along really well. And ever since then, like she said, we just kept in touch and we've got to work together through business and now also through the podcast.

Nice. So it's a very similar story to Sarah and Nettie from thanks for visiting. Yeah, they got sat together a meeting, I think it was like a local meeting for something or other and just got, just got chatting from there. So over the last five years, how many podcast episodes are you on now? What's the, what's the number, honey?

50. I think we just crossed 50. Are we at 50?

You're nearly a year.

Yeah, I think Tomorrow will be 52. So. And we're closing in. It's literally really been a year where we launched I think the second week in October. So we're closing in on one year anniversary, which is crazy.

So congratulations. It's. It's always cool to see. I remember chatting to you Both on, on LinkedIn, like right back at like the first couple of episodes. So it's cool to, to see and all the new tech and all the cool things you've got going on. So what was the, what was the conversation that started the, the podcast then? Annie? When, when did. It must have been like just over a year ago that you two were like at an event or somewhere and you just sort of thought let's go for this podcast idea. What was the, what was the thinking?

So we, well, we started, we did the clubhouses during COVID That kind of came to be. And I had asked Alex to come in and be on one. And we did it, and we had a really good time. We're like, this is a lot of fun. We should think about it. Then we both went on a couple of different podcasts, and by the time we got to. Well, actually, it was my birthday last year, Alex went to Mexico, and as she was leaving the country, she decided to wish me happy birthday across all social media platforms with what we. What became our. The Bitmoji with our. The little microphone and everything. We had been joking about it one weekend, texting, and she saved it. She sent it out there, and she's like, big announcements to come, something like that. And everybody just went crazy about it. So by the time we get to VRMA in San Antonio, we decided we were going to talk to a couple of people. Alex ran into, actually, Sarah and Annette in the bathroom, and they had their shirts on that said, ask me about my podcast. And she was like, you got to come in here. You got to meet these girls. You're not going to believe this. And I thought, why are you bringing me to the bathroom to meet two girls? This is really strange. Walked in and it saw their shirts. And we're like just another sign that just. Signs kept presenting themselves for us to do the show. So by the time we walked out of the last session of vrma, we decided, okay, let's just put it out there. We're going to do it. We have no idea what we're doing, how we need to do it. We're just going to commit to it. You know, what is it you say, Alex? Commit first, figure it out later.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing, too. We had so many people that we had kind of dropped hints that this was what we were going to do. And so many people at that event kept asking, you know, when is it going to start? When's your first episode? And we didn't. We didn't know the answers to any of those things. And so we literally said, okay, let's just commit to figuring it out. And. And we did. And there is a lot to figure out if you haven't done it before. And there aren't a ton of people that you know, and we. I've always been an avid podcast listener, but I only know a couple people who actually have one themselves. And it's interesting when you ask somebody for advice on how to start a podcast, there are so many different ways to do it and so many different systems and mics and hosting and all the. That the More questions we asked, the more confusing it got. So we just picked some and just went with it. But it worked out pretty good, and we've actually stuck with all the same systems for the most part that we started with.

Well, this is a nice little segue into one of my later questions, but I might as well ask it now. And we'll go. We'll go, Annie, with yourself first, what's the one piece of advice that you wish you had received before starting the podcast?

Oh, my gosh.

I.

Honestly, I just can't think other than just kind of don't overthink it. I think the one thing that I went into is, like, trying to really plan out every episode and research a guest and really have all the questions. And I. When we started trying to do it that way, things just became stale and it just wasn't as authentic. And I think that if someone had told me before, like, just go in like you're normally having a conversation and don't overthink it. It comes out so much more natural.

I like that, Alex. Anything to bounce off that.

Yeah, I would. I would 100% echo that, too, that. There are a couple episodes in the early days you can tell we were more nervous about, and we had questions written. And it's like you. When you have questions written out, you focus more on being able to ask those and not listening to the person as they're speaking so that you can actually respond back in your natural way. And the other piece of advice? I would have done it sooner. I hate that we waited as long as we did. To be honest, I think we could have gotten started a couple years earlier if we had started five years ago. My goodness. Can't even imagine where we would be now. But that's. That's not a problem. I mean, I think we're just on a growth trajectory, and we've got plenty of time ahead of us to continue to make this a great thing.

So what tech? Because I know there's going to be a lot of people who are literally listening to this or watching this, who are in your shoes, maybe 18 months ago, like, and they're thinking, well, what do we get started with? What are you using? Like, what is the tech that you are using behind the scenes? Like, the microphones to the software that you're using? Like, is it as much as what everybody thinks it is? Or is it a lot simpler than that, Alex? I guess. Or any whoever wants to take that one.

I don't know that it's. I mean, one. It's actually, it's a decently affordable hobby, I would say. I mean, we haven't had to buy anything that's been too outrageous for it, but we both have Yeti blue mics and I mean, when we started, we knew we wanted to make this into a brand. We're both very much into branding and making sure that we had a look and feel for the show that would take us in the directions we wanted to go. So really refining our logo, building the website. We use PodPage, we use Buzzsprout as our distribution. We use a great editor on Fiverr that now does the editing for us. What else do we use? We used Otter for the transcription, Alitu for editing when we were doing the editing. Those are the main ones. Mailchimp, because we send out email blasts. It's a lot of different parts, but none that are unfiguredable. They're all figureoutable.

Yeah, exactly. So like basically start now, break it and just keep on improving. That's the, that's the.

Yeah. And don't worry about if. Don't worry about thinking of topics. For us at least that hasn't been a hard thing or guess. I mean, we've been able to, I think our experience in the industry and anything that you're interested. Interested in, if you have an interest in learning more about it and you know a lot about it, it'll. The content will come to you. And if you just make it more conversational, that's where the magic really starts to happen.

And now you've got sponsors, right?

We do, yes. Yeah.

The hobby is no longer, you know, one that you have to self fund, which is nice.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, Wheelhouse is our, is our brand sponsor and that's been great because they've been very engaging and giving us ideas for, you know, for conversations and guests that we can talk to. But to Alex's point, I think that for anybody that wants to start out with this, we both have different skill sets for different specializations within the industry, but also just a really a wealth of connections that we fostered over the years. So we both spent a lot of time building our personal brands and putting them together as a really strong brand only just opened more doors for us to do this podcast. And so we actually kind of have, you know, a fairly long Runway of guests in front of us that, that we can access, which is a nice problem to have because I've heard of people that get to kind of year one and they exhaust all of their resources and they don't know where to go from there. So I would say definitely focus on your individual brands before you do something this. This enormous.

No, I can totally relate. I got to probably the end of year one or year two, and I thought, oh, I've interviewed everybody.

Yeah.

So that's when I started doing loads of, like, mini, like, solo ones back by myself and sort of built it up again. But, yeah, definitely can. Can relate in some. Some lovely, lovely little bits of advice there. And now, from what I see, the events that you've been to, you've set up a podcasting booth or an interview booth. Like, where did that idea come from, going to one? I don't know which event it was, if you want to fill in, like, the gaps and whatnot. So you had, like, your own little podcast booth and interviewing people, like, talk. Talk about that?

Yeah, it's actually really.

Yeah. Okay.

We did a VRNA executive conference, and where that came from was Alex and I were talking about ways that we could participate in shows. And one thing that you hear from a vendor side is, gosh, none of the people come into the vendor hall. But then you hear people that should go in the vendor hall, the buyers, and they're like, I just don't want to go in the vendor hall because I feel like I'm just. There's just people constantly coming to me. So we thought, well, why not put us in the middle of it and have people come up for conversations and interview them live and do that? And so we presented that to vrma. They were kind of, at first, a little, like, hesitant to entertain it. And then the more we talked through it, they said, well, let's give it a try at the executive summit. So we did that, and we interviewed people as they were coming out of the session in the vendor. The vendor hall and had conversations with them right in the middle of it. So it was great to interact with them. It was great because the vendors were right there, and they didn't feel like they were not getting attention. The attendees did not feel like they were being accosted in any way. So hopefully we'll be able to do a larger segment of that at other conferences with other podcasts and kind of do, like, this rotating, you know, news desk, if you will. We just think it'll be a great way to get everybody sort of engaged with each other.

And now you're doing panels as well at shows and conferences. Is that what you were doing before the podcast, or is the podcast giving you the confidence to put your name forward to do on the stage and panels like Alex.

I think it's given us more confidence to be able to do it. But I've been being on panels for probably at least the last four years, I'd say. But I. I look at it all differently now. I think once you start to find your voice and you learn to hear what you sound like, which, to be honest, that's kind of a crazy thing. At first, I didn't used to like to even hear my voice on a voicemail. And not that I love hearing my own voice, but you just get used to what you sound like and you stop being so critical of it. So that. That was a big thing for me. But, yeah, now, you know, just with. We obviously are getting asked to be on more panels, which is exciting to talk about, you know, the companies that we work for, and also just, you know, spread more knowledge and exposure for the podcast.

So that's my next question. From doing this and being at the shows and whatnot, but particularly the podcast, has more opportunities or more people come to you, like Alex and Annie for your day jobs, condo world, etc. And sort of said, oh, I listen to you on a podcast or I checked out your podcast episode. Is that. Has that happened yet? You're talking about the personal brand. Is that being like a byproduct of Annie?

Yeah, for sure. For me, I know I've talked to. So I work in account management and kind of on the sales side of things, and I've talked to people and we'll just get in conversation and somebody will say, I was listening to this podcast. Are you Annie? Are you? You know, it starts to be like, I'm. I'm the Annie of Alex and Annie. And I'm actually fascinating is you just don't realize how many people are listening and you just, you run into. I think two weeks ago, I had four different demos and three out of the four people had all been listening to the show. So they maybe not necessarily connected the two, but as soon as they talked to me, they realized, oh, my gosh, you're that person. And I think again, it gives me credibility and being a subject matter expert in multiple areas that people are like, okay, if I'm going to give you my business, I feel comfortable and confident in being able to. To do that.

Yeah, right.

Absolutely. Yeah. Alex, have you anything to put on top of that? Is that benefited in what you've been doing at Condo World?

Yeah, absolutely. And I will say too, I think podcasting is one of the least utilized but most effective Ways of building connections with your current customers, future customers. There's so many more opportunities of things that we can do from a homeowner, you know, side of podcast, a guest side of podcast. This is obviously B2B. And I. What I found is just mostly in the partners that we work with and the vendors that we have. When somebody already knows you, it's. It's funny. Like they, they feel like they really know, they really know you. And they do after, if you've listened to all of our episodes. But it really, it just makes conversation very easy when you're trying to do business with somebody when they, you can start telling a story and they'll say, oh yeah, yeah, I know when that happened. And I'm like, yeah, great. So I think just for building the relationships and for sure, you know, anytime a company has somebody that is a visible subject matter expert that just is inherently valuable for the company. We talk a lot about what we talked about today, our personal brands. But I think a good employer brand is made up of employees that have personal brands that reflect that, you know, into how they project for the company.

Yeah, I think that's. I'm starting to think I'm at the age now when my kids are, well, my eldest is getting to 10 and sort of thinking about like his sort of education and whatnot. And it's got me thinking about how to. He wants to create a YouTube video, wants to create a channel. And I'm thinking that everybody should be able to create content in some way, shape or form. Doesn't matter what that content needs to be. Because even if he doesn't want to be entrepreneurial like his parents, if he wants to be somebody who is employed, like being able to create content and be able to add that value, I feel like in 10, 15 years time when he's going on that into that world, it'll be so valuable to do. And if it's a podcast or if it's a video or however. And it's something that I say a lot to hosts. So if I know we've got a lot of hosts watching. So. Hi Daniel. Cherie. Somebody dropped in a comment saying love this. Well done, girls. So this is brilliant. So.

Oh, great.

I think for hosts as well, it's really important to be able to look at this content medium as well because everyone focuses on Facebook or Instagram. But podcasts, like you say, you could do an interview with a local business owner who is doing whatever that may be, but something that is ideal for your guests, tests and that will sit there in, in the world of SEO and whatnot. And so, and it builds relationships. So it's, it's, it's definitely a cool thing. And again, it's not, we make it up to be something a lot harder than it is a lot of the time. So you get a decent microphone, you can use your webcam on your camera and, you know, you can find somebody on Fiverr that can do the, you know, the, the editing parts and you can pretty much have someone up and running. So let's, let's move on to the topic at hand, which is disrupting and something that you've come up with this year is a new hashtag. I saw you wearing the branded shirts an event recently. So it's called we are not Airbnb. Let's go with Alex. Can you just give a little bit of an idea or just explain a little bit more about what this topic is at hand, what the hashtags about and why are we sort of starting to spread it? And then we're going to go into two questions that we've got from LinkedIn.

Yeah, absolutely. Sounds great. So we're not Airbnb. It actually initiated the reason that we did the hashtag and the shirts from our episode with Steve Milo, which, that came out back in July and that was one of our most listened to episodes. And he had a line where he repeatedly said, you know, from, for legislation issues, we need to define that we are not Airbnb, we are not Airbnb, that the professionally managed vacation rental industry is not who is causing these issues, that that's what the legislative restrictions are having to be put place for. And really what that means is that it doesn't mean that if you are an individual host, that you are not Airbnb. What it means is that you are, if you are a professional host and if you have standards that you operate by and you're providing a great guest experience, whether you have one unit or you have a hundred, if you have safety measures, if you have standards in place, then you're a professional host. Airbnb is a platform that we all use, but that is, it's a company out of California. That is not what we are as an entity. And it's really interesting to see when you go to these different cities, that at the state level too, that these legislation restrictions are being put in place are done by people that don't know the difference and don't understand that short term rentals, vacation rentals have been around for decades. This isn't anything new. And really, I think most areas don't understand how much emphasis we have all and interest we've all put into using better technology to help with some of these issues. So, you know, noise, software and things of that nature, that guest screening super hog being one of them. There are so many tools out there, point central, that are great, great tools that almost all of us are using to make sure that we are taking care of our guests, being good members of our community and providing a great experience. So, hashtag we are not. Airbnb is trying to differentiate between professional hosts versus the platform. And unfortunately, the bad apples that you use the platform that are bringing down the industry. And it's, it's, it's a small portion. I mean, really in relation to the people that are doing good on the platform. It's, it's a small amount, but a few of them can cause a lot of damage. And when one city gets onto something, it's really interesting to see how the other ones just kind of decide, okay, well, they pass this, now we're going to pass it too. And it might not have even been a problem in their area prior to that.

I think that deserves one of these, please. That's a good one, I think.

I think you got to teach us all those tricks.

I'll show you the ways. Perfect. So obviously it's very important and, and I feel 100% with, with legislation all over the world, not just. This is not just America. So for you UK hosts, you know, there's, yeah, there's been a big thing happening at the moment over here in England. And this is really important to be able to bring this to, to the peoples, because the people making the decision, they are lumping it all with, with Airbnb, which is 100. So let's go with a question from LinkedIn. So I popped a little like literally an hour ago, said, we've got the amazing Alex and Annie coming on the podcast. What questions would you have? And it was a really cool one from Matthew Ray Banks will give you a little shout out now. And he put the Get Fundamental. So basically my question is around Get Fundamental with the Airbnb initiative. And Annie, I know you want to, you want to jump in on this. So the question is this. If the audience is an individual who has been hosting one property for 18 months or less, I think this is pretty much a question he's asking. It's like, my friend, I've got a friend.

But it's like asking for a friend.

Yeah, asking for a friend. So if, if the audience is an individual who's been hosting one property for 18 months or less, exclusively on Airbnb, seeing high occupancy rates and a good adr, which is average daily rate. What is the point point they are trying to get across to that person for his friend Annie. How would you.

So I think, I think one I would ask the question is, you know, you, you generally, if you're at this point and you're doing a unit and you've got it on there and you're making money, you've probably incorporated or made an LLC or done something to register a business. So you went to the trouble to come up with a name. You want to brand that and, you know, maybe you want to go and have two or three units down the road. The thing is not that we don't want people to use Airbnb. It's a distribution channel. There's no problem with that. But it's just like, would you want your, your property called booking.com? would you want to be called Expedia or Vrbo? What is happening is people are building their own brand through Airbnb and letting Airbnb benefit from the brand and all the work that they're doing. So don't, don't stop using Airbnb. It's a great channel. But keep in mind that you don't want to call yourself an Airbnb host.

Host.

You are a host of a rental, a short term rental, a vacation rental. You are Mark Boosley's, you know, vacation cottages. You're not Airbnb cottages. So that's, that's what we're talking about in terms of that aspect of it is don't give your brand over to somebody else. And I, I think it was, you initially said it, and Alex says it a lot is like, you know, don't build your house on somebody else's land. And when you're putting your unit out there and, and constantly saying, I'm an Airbnb host, I am an Airbnb, or I am Airbnb, all you're doing is building their brand and their net worth. And I think, Mark, you said it at the STR wealth conference is, you know, unless, you know, Mark Chesky is, is paying your bills, you know, why would you want to do that? You don't want to be his employee. You're your own employee. You're bringing your money to the table. So use your brand, focus on your brand. You can put your brand on that channel. So do it it. Don't let them again, Become the Kleenex of our industry.

Yeah, definitely. Really, really good one. So Matthew, we answered your question. I tagged you in on the LinkedIn LinkedIn Live, Matthew, so hopefully you get back to this. So the next question, Alex, and I'll pass this on to yourself, is by Mr. Chris Mourn, sponsor of the show IPRAC, which is pretty cool, sponsors all the content and he jumped jump straight in on LinkedIn and I'm going to read it out here. So he put great idea with disruptors. My question to ask them is this Explanation Mark. Explanation Mark. He said free. But let's just say what is the one main reason of uncertainty a potential guest has booking direct with a short term rental property manager or vacation rental profession? What would be that one main uncertainty? Would you, would you think, Alex?

Well, it, I, I assume he means if you were on Airbnb, if you booked with somebody that that's their only property versus somebody that is our size that has a lot of units. And really, you know, I kind of change the question a little bit because what Airbnb has done in a lot of cases is it makes people feel more comfortable booking because that individual host, unless they're somebody who has a boostly website like what you do or whatever works with ICND or a company that, or fuel that, you know, does these websites, if you don't have your own brand already established, then you know, looking on Airbnb you at least feel comfortable that they're going to refund your money. They're always in the guest's best interest versus the host. But when it comes down to it, when you're further down the line, the, the trust and the, the standards that you get when you book with a professional host that's done this for many years or even that's just started, but it's really put a lot of emphasis on making sure that they're doing business. The it really comes down to trust that you get there, the property is going to be as expected, that it looks like the pictures that there's nothing that is unsafe about it, that you have communication with the host, that you can get questions answered as soon as you need them. That's really important. And the bad apples of where we are not Airbnb movement started from are the ones that are the opposite, that they get to a destination and they actually don't have a place to stay or it's not what they pictured. So I think, you know, and Chris would agree with this, it comes down to the trust factor and making sure that when people get to where they're going. It's what they expected and in a best case scenario it's even better than what they expected.

Yes, that's, that is the goal, to be better than what they would expect. Under, under promise and over, over deliver. Right, which, which is a good one. Chris has got a really good story and he's, he's actually putting it down in, in the next book, which is the blueprint book, he's putting a chapter down on trust and he's in that story about it, which is like the bad apple one is, is really, it's a bit of a shocking story that's going to be in there. So that's going to be out in December. So Chris, looking forward to that. All right, brilliant. I think we've, we've done, we've covered those really well. I wanted to finish with what I'm going to call the Famous Five. I may have to change it to something else, but basically five questions and I have preempt and sent them over to Alex and Annie. So just give them a little bit, a bit of a heads up. And what I would love as well, I know we've got quite a lot of people tuning in live with us now, which is, which is great. So I want you to list off your answers to these questions as well in the comments, whether it's live or on the replay. And if there's any good ones, I'll read them out. So Famous Five, quick Five, fast Five, whatever we want to call it, moving forward. I'll, we'll go. Annie, we'll go with you first. So your question for you is what are you, you currently reading? What book are you currently reading?

Well, I just got this started and what is really cool is you autographed it and you put in there the hashtag we are not here. Yeah, perfect. So, yeah, getting ready to start this.

Alex, yours is in the post. I, I was hoping.

It must be easier.

It's probably sat there in the mailbox box somewhere. I hope it's gone to the right place. Otherwise somebody has got a little book.

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll go. Alex, what is your currently your most used emoji, which is your go to emoji of choice?

So it depends who I'm talking to. I would say in most cases I have two that I use. If it's Annie, we're normally laughing and joking about things. It's mostly the, the crying, laughing face emoji. I would say in general as just kind of how I text and my tone I like the smiley face. That's kind of the little blushing smiley face. Like, just, like, happy, nice. You know, humble, appreciative. So, yeah, one of those two.

Lots of laughing emojis. Basically. All of them.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Annie and I have way too much fun.

How about you, Annie? Apart from the laughing emojis?

Oh, well, actually, sadly, because I. I have a habit of texting and making sure that I post people's birthday wishes. That the one that's in my top five, I looked at it was the birthday cake emoji. It looks like I want to eat birthday cake all the time.

That is not a bad thing. Okay, so next one. If you didn't have to sleep, and we'll go Annie first. So if you didn't have to sleep, what would you do with the. The extra time, extra 10, 8, 7 hours that you get in your day?

I would take cooking classes. Yeah, I really enjoy cooking. I'm not good at following recipes, so I'm really. I. I really try to. To learn how to put things together, and I would love to take some classes if I had extra time to be able to just understand flavors and spices and things like that so I could cook more.

Would you.

Would you say you are a good cook?

My husband would say. I mean, I haven't killed him yet, so we haven't had food poisoning in our house. I would say I'm. I'm fairly decent.

Well, that's it. That's a win. Alex, what would you do with your extra time?

Oh, boy. That's a hard thing to say. I probably learn more about podcasting. I already do it already in my extra time, but if I had more time, I think there's so many more things we could do with the show, and hopefully we'll get there. But really, the whole last year has been just a balancing act of learning how to really manage my time. And I think we've done some pretty good things to improve where we were a year ago. We use what Andrew McConnell calls advanced calendaring, so we use calendly, and that's how we schedule things and how we make sure we have time to do our regular job as well as the podcast, which a lot of that is done after hours, actually. And then also this year being chair for the board of directors on the chamber, that's a third job. So just having. Having extra time would be wonderful, but I would really like to be able to put more into just learning about the craft and more on the technology side of podcasting, because it is a Lot of fun.

Nice. You've got the podcasting bug now.

Yeah, I really do.

All right, Alex, well, we'll throw this next one straight back to you. We've got two more. Where is your happy place? Like, where's that place that you go to? And just. Just like, you got those smiling emojis going all over.

Yeah, on the boat. We're big boaters here in the Myrtle beach area. We live on the Intercoastal Waterway, and. And in our area here, it's a pretty big boating community that we have a lot of friends that boat. And so just being able to ride around on the boat or go meet up with friends and go out to dinner is just. That's kind of our relaxing. My husband and I, what we really enjoy doing.

Nice. Annie, what about you?

Mine, really, it's kind of similar. Any. Anything, just sort of on the water, just sitting by the water, just near bodies of water. I just find that to be just very cathartic. If you have a bad day, you can go down there and scream into the void and get your stress out, but it's. There's just something about water that just levels out your day and makes everything okay.

So if anybody knows Annie lives near Annie, and you just see it one day by the sea, screaming, you know that it's been a band shouting at.

The sea, you know, that day.

Okay, final one, and this is the one that I'm interested to find out about. Annie will go you. What is your hidden talent? Hidden talent?

Hidden talent. I don't know that I have one. I've been actually trying to mull this one over all day. I honestly, I don't know. I think somebody else would have to identify that for me, because I don't know.

Alex, what would you say Annie's hidden talent is? You've known her, what, for five years now?

She has an incredible way of bringing people together, making people feel comfortable, which I don't think that I think she knows that she's probably being humble, but I don't know that it's hidden. I think it's actually probably very visible that. But she has a great way of making people just feel welcome and like they belong in a conversation. And that's how we met, really, because I walked into that room at that conference feeling like I didn't know anybody. And the one thing that you don't know early in your career is that probably most of the people in the room feel the same way, too. So I know that now, and I'm much more likely to start a conversation with somebody that felt like how I used to feel. But back at that time, that was Amy. That really made me feel comfortable and like, I was supposed to. Supposed to be there. So she does it a lot.

All right, Alex, what is your hidden talent? If you. If you know what that is, or. Should I be asking Annie what your hidden talent is?

Oh, boy. Well, let her tell you, Sarah. I have one talent that I don't do anymore, but I think it's worth mentioning because it's always something that people are like, I just can't believe that that's true. But I used to play ice hockey in high school and played for a year my senior year in high school on a co ed team. I was not very good, but I did. And I learned very quickly that on the first day of practice, I had all. All the. All the pads, all the. All the things I needed, except for shin pads. And what I found out was that when you're first learning to play ice hockey, you mostly fall right on your shins. So I learned the hard way that of all the pads you could have, those are the ones that you want, but actually really ended up loving it. And I wish that I had started it earlier in high school because I really did like it. And by the time I was getting semi decent, that I wasn't following all the time, it was time to graduate. But maybe I'll pick it up again someday. We'll see.

And. Okay, that's. That's very cool. Annie, what would you say? I loved it how we threw it over. So let's say, Annie, what would you say Alex's hidden talent would be?

I think kind of the way she sees me is that she has this ability to make people feel comfortable, to do the things that they think are impossible of themselves. So I've known a lot of people that I feel like were, you know, motivational and maybe mentoring, but never had anybody who could make me feel comfortable jumping off the cliff with them to just do crazy things. And so I would. I don't think that there's anybody else I would have done this podcast or any of the things that we've done in the last year. It's just her ability to draw me out of my discomfort or put me in my discomfort for the benefit of the two of us.

Be comfortable about feeling.

Being uncomfortable. Yes.

Yeah.

Well, it's been amazing to see, like, from my point of view, it's been like, I remember messaging you right at the very start. It's been amazing to see like the growth and the guests and the, the conferences and the podcast boobs and all the cool things. And I'm looking forward to the next 52 weeks, the next 52 episodes and seeing where you're at. Episode 104. So, well done. We really like it. Keep. Keep going down the route that you're going, like, talking about, we are not Airbnb and all that. That is definitely disrupting and long may it happen. So, from me, thank you very much. Final thing, if anybody wants to connect about anything afterwards, where's the best place to send them to? Annie, we'll go. You first. And Alex, anyone wants to chat about anything or even wants to maybe come on the podcast, where's the best place to send people to?

So they can go to our website, alexandanipodcast.com if they want to reach me, certainly LinkedIn. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn. Have lots of conversations going there, but you can email us through our website as well.

Amazing. And. And Alex, is it LinkedIn best place?

Yeah, LinkedIn, yeah. And just our website. Sorry, you already said alexnanypodcast.com but yeah, you can look up Alex Husener. H U S N E R and like annie, I'm on LinkedIn more than any other social platform these days, so happy to connect and talk with anybody.

Lovely. All right, you too. We'll. We'll let you go. Thank you so much, everybody that is tuning in. Please do, do leave some love in. In the comments. And there's been a lot of people that have said wonderful podcasters, which is. Which is great. So I know there's people tuning in and saying hi. So if it's live on the replay, don't forget, leave a little link to your business so you can give yourself a bit of a shout out in the comments, which, which is lovely. But from me, thank you very much for tuning in. We'll be back with another podcast episode very soon. We've got free going out on a weekly basis now. So with that being said, let me do the little outro.